Nationalist tsunami in Northern Ireland
WHAT has happened in Northern Ireland is profound. For the first time since its creation a century ago, a party that seeks unification with the Republic has won an election there. After a decade where jitters or delight — depending on your point of view — over the strains on the United Kingdom have focused on Scotland, those pressures are becoming visible in Northern Ireland, too. Boris and Brexit led to this tsunami of nationalism. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) supported leaving the EU and either didn’t understand the implications or they were just foolish.
ANDREW NUtt, Bargoed, Gwent. WHAT was unthinkable a decade ago has happened at the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections with Sinn Fein becoming the largest party at Stormont. How did this come about? There has been a transformation of Northern Ireland society since the 1990s and the Good Friday Agreement. The younger generation have no memory of terrorist violence. There has been a process of social engineering with ‘progressive’ school curricula. Northern Ireland is no longer insulated from the outside world, partly due to global communications. Secularism is increasingly taking over from religion and Sinn Fein has adapted itself accordingly. It conducted a slick election campaign, sweetening up Republicanism, abandoning its origins as a proletarian party and reaching out across the socio-economic mix. This was reflected in the preponderance of middle-class, educated and professional candidates, which paid off electorally. The party embraced globalism twinned with political correctness, which is moving Northern Ireland away from tribalism with an affinity to youth voters who eschew the old guard, something that the DUP failed to address. Unionism was outmanoeuvred by a rebranded political party that senses not all Protestants are opposed to a United Ireland. It is not a question of if the United Kingdom, including Scotland, breaks up, but when. Regardless of what you think of its agenda, Sinn Fein has seized the initiative.
DAVID FLEMING,
Downham Market, Norfolk.
SINN Fein, the political surrogate of the IRA, is Northern Ireland’s largest party, but not yet in the majority over Unionists. As a former Unionist Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) at Stormont, I would like to ask Boris Johnson if he is going to continue with his Brexit betrayal through debasing my Britishness by way of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Is it impolite to ask what provisions the Government will make to accommodate more than one million Unionists crossing the Irish Sea because they can’t live in Northern Ireland under the ‘Brits out’ Sinn Fein enabled by Dublin and Brussels rule? Answers please to the abandoned British citizens of Northern Ireland.